TY - JOUR A1 - Seufert, Anika A1 - Poignée, Fabian A1 - Seufert, Michael A1 - Hoßfeld, Tobias T1 - Share and multiply: modeling communication and generated traffic in private WhatsApp groups JF - IEEE Access N2 - Group-based communication is a highly popular communication paradigm, which is especially prominent in mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications, such as WhatsApp. Chat groups in MIM applications facilitate the sharing of various types of messages (e.g., text, voice, image, video) among a large number of participants. As each message has to be transmitted to every other member of the group, which multiplies the traffic, this has a massive impact on the underlying communication networks. However, most chat groups are private and network operators cannot obtain deep insights into MIM communication via network measurements due to end-to-end encryption. Thus, the generation of traffic is not well understood, given that it depends on sizes of communication groups, speed of communication, and exchanged message types. In this work, we provide a huge data set of 5,956 private WhatsApp chat histories, which contains over 76 million messages from more than 117,000 users. We describe and model the properties of chat groups and users, and the communication within these chat groups, which gives unprecedented insights into private MIM communication. In addition, we conduct exemplary measurements for the most popular message types, which empower the provided models to estimate the traffic over time in a chat group. KW - communication models KW - group-based communication KW - mobile instant messaging KW - mobile messaging application KW - private chat groups KW - WhatsApp Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349430 VL - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seufert, Anika A1 - Poignée, Fabian A1 - Hoßfeld, Tobias A1 - Seufert, Michael T1 - Pandemic in the digital age: analyzing WhatsApp communication behavior before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown JF - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications N2 - The strict restrictions introduced by the COVID-19 lockdowns, which started from March 2020, changed people’s daily lives and habits on many different levels. In this work, we investigate the impact of the lockdown on the communication behavior in the mobile instant messaging application WhatsApp. Our evaluations are based on a large dataset of 2577 private chat histories with 25,378,093 messages from 51,973 users. The analysis of the one-to-one and group conversations confirms that the lockdown severely altered the communication in WhatsApp chats compared to pre-pandemic time ranges. In particular, we observe short-term effects, which caused an increased message frequency in the first lockdown months and a shifted communication activity during the day in March and April 2020. Moreover, we also see long-term effects of the ongoing pandemic situation until February 2021, which indicate a change of communication behavior towards more regular messaging, as well as a persisting change in activity during the day. The results of our work show that even anonymized chat histories can tell us a lot about people’s behavior and especially behavioral changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and thus are of great relevance for behavioral researchers. Furthermore, looking at the pandemic from an Internet provider perspective, these insights can be used during the next pandemic, or if the current COVID-19 situation worsens, to adapt communication networks to the changed usage behavior early on and thus avoid network congestion. KW - cultural and media studies KW - information systems and information technology KW - science, technology and society Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-300261 VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seufert, Michael T1 - Statistical methods and models based on quality of experience distributions JF - Quality and User Experience N2 - Due to biased assumptions on the underlying ordinal rating scale in subjective Quality of Experience (QoE) studies, Mean Opinion Score (MOS)-based evaluations provide results, which are hard to interpret and can be misleading. This paper proposes to consider the full QoE distribution for evaluating, reporting, and modeling QoE results instead of relying on MOS-based metrics derived from results based on ordinal rating scales. The QoE distribution can be represented in a concise way by using the parameters of a multinomial distribution without losing any information about the underlying QoE ratings, and even keeps backward compatibility with previous, biased MOS-based results. Considering QoE results as a realization of a multinomial distribution allows to rely on a well-established theoretical background, which enables meaningful evaluations also for ordinal rating scales. Moreover, QoE models based on QoE distributions keep detailed information from the results of a QoE study of a technical system, and thus, give an unprecedented richness of insights into the end users’ experience with the technical system. In this work, existing and novel statistical methods for QoE distributions are summarized and exemplary evaluations are outlined. Furthermore, using the novel concept of quality steps, simulative and analytical QoE models based on QoE distributions are presented and showcased. The goal is to demonstrate the fundamental advantages of considering QoE distributions over MOS-based evaluations if the underlying rating data is ordinal in nature. KW - statistical methods KW - quality of experience Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-235733 SN - 2366-0139 VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seufert, Anika A1 - Schröder, Svenja A1 - Seufert, Michael T1 - Delivering User Experience over Networks: Towards a Quality of Experience Centered Design Cycle for Improved Design of Networked Applications JF - SN Computer Science N2 - To deliver the best user experience (UX), the human-centered design cycle (HCDC) serves as a well-established guideline to application developers. However, it does not yet cover network-specific requirements, which become increasingly crucial, as most applications deliver experience over the Internet. The missing network-centric view is provided by Quality of Experience (QoE), which could team up with UX towards an improved overall experience. By considering QoE aspects during the development process, it can be achieved that applications become network-aware by design. In this paper, the Quality of Experience Centered Design Cycle (QoE-CDC) is proposed, which provides guidelines on how to design applications with respect to network-specific requirements and QoE. Its practical value is showcased for popular application types and validated by outlining the design of a new smartphone application. We show that combining HCDC and QoE-CDC will result in an application design, which reaches a high UX and avoids QoE degradation. KW - user experience KW - human-centered design KW - design cycle KW - application design KW - quality of experience Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-271762 SN - 2661-8907 VL - 2 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hirth, Matthias A1 - Seufert, Michael A1 - Lange, Stanislav A1 - Meixner, Markus A1 - Tran-Gia, Phuoc T1 - Performance evaluation of hybrid crowdsensing and fixed sensor systems for event detection in urban environments JF - Sensors N2 - Crowdsensing offers a cost-effective way to collect large amounts of environmental sensor data; however, the spatial distribution of crowdsensing sensors can hardly be influenced, as the participants carry the sensors, and, additionally, the quality of the crowdsensed data can vary significantly. Hybrid systems that use mobile users in conjunction with fixed sensors might help to overcome these limitations, as such systems allow assessing the quality of the submitted crowdsensed data and provide sensor values where no crowdsensing data are typically available. In this work, we first used a simulation study to analyze a simple crowdsensing system concerning the detection performance of spatial events to highlight the potential and limitations of a pure crowdsourcing system. The results indicate that even if only a small share of inhabitants participate in crowdsensing, events that have locations correlated with the population density can be easily and quickly detected using such a system. On the contrary, events with uniformly randomly distributed locations are much harder to detect using a simple crowdsensing-based approach. A second evaluation shows that hybrid systems improve the detection probability and time. Finally, we illustrate how to compute the minimum number of fixed sensors for the given detection time thresholds in our exemplary scenario. KW - crowdsensing KW - event detection KW - detection time simulation KW - performance analysis Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-245245 SN - 1424-8220 VL - 21 IS - 17 ER - TY - THES A1 - Seufert, Michael Thomas T1 - Quality of Experience and Access Network Traffic Management of HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming T1 - Quality of Experience und Verkehrsmanagement in Zugangsnetzwerken für adaptives HTTP Videostreaming N2 - The thesis focuses on Quality of Experience (QoE) of HTTP adaptive video streaming (HAS) and traffic management in access networks to improve the QoE of HAS. First, the QoE impact of adaptation parameters and time on layer was investigated with subjective crowdsourcing studies. The results were used to compute a QoE-optimal adaptation strategy for given video and network conditions. This allows video service providers to develop and benchmark improved adaptation logics for HAS. Furthermore, the thesis investigated concepts to monitor video QoE on application and network layer, which can be used by network providers in the QoE-aware traffic management cycle. Moreover, an analytic and simulative performance evaluation of QoE-aware traffic management on a bottleneck link was conducted. Finally, the thesis investigated socially-aware traffic management for HAS via Wi-Fi offloading of mobile HAS flows. A model for the distribution of public Wi-Fi hotspots and a platform for socially-aware traffic management on private home routers was presented. A simulative performance evaluation investigated the impact of Wi-Fi offloading on the QoE and energy consumption of mobile HAS. N2 - Die Doktorarbeit beschäftigt sich mit Quality of Experience (QoE) – der subjektiv empfundenen Dienstgüte – von adaptivem HTTP Videostreaming (HAS) und mit Verkehrsmanagement, das in Zugangsnetzwerken eingesetzt werden kann, um die QoE des adaptiven Videostreamings zu verbessern. Zuerst wurde der Einfluss von Adaptionsparameters und der Zeit pro Qualitätsstufe auf die QoE von adaptivem Videostreaming mittels subjektiver Crowdsourcingstudien untersucht. Die Ergebnisse wurden benutzt, um die QoE-optimale Adaptionsstrategie für gegebene Videos und Netzwerkbedingungen zu berechnen. Dies ermöglicht Dienstanbietern von Videostreaming verbesserte Adaptionsstrategien für adaptives Videostreaming zu entwerfen und zu benchmarken. Weiterhin untersuchte die Arbeit Konzepte zum Überwachen von QoE von Videostreaming in der Applikation und im Netzwerk, die von Netzwerkbetreibern im Kreislauf des QoE-bewussten Verkehrsmanagements eingesetzt werden können. Außerdem wurde eine analytische und simulative Leistungsbewertung von QoE-bewusstem Verkehrsmanagement auf einer Engpassverbindung durchgeführt. Schließlich untersuchte diese Arbeit sozialbewusstes Verkehrsmanagement für adaptives Videostreaming mittels WLAN Offloading, also dem Auslagern von mobilen Videoflüssen über WLAN Netzwerke. Es wurde ein Modell für die Verteilung von öffentlichen WLAN Zugangspunkte und eine Plattform für sozialbewusstes Verkehrsmanagement auf privaten, häuslichen WLAN Routern vorgestellt. Abschließend untersuchte eine simulative Leistungsbewertung den Einfluss von WLAN Offloading auf die QoE und den Energieverbrauch von mobilem adaptivem Videostreaming. T3 - Würzburger Beiträge zur Leistungsbewertung Verteilter Systeme - 03/17 KW - Quality of Experience KW - Zugangsnetz KW - Videoübertragung KW - Adaptives System KW - Verkehrsregelung KW - Quality of Experience KW - Verkehrsmanagement KW - Adaptives Videostreaming KW - Quality of Experience KW - Traffic Management KW - Adaptive Video Streaming KW - Verkehrsleitsystem Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-154131 SN - 1432-8801 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lugrin, Jean-Luc A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Habel, Michael A1 - Roth, Daniel A1 - Seufert, Christian A1 - Grafe, Silke T1 - Breaking Bad Behaviors: A New Tool for Learning Classroom Management Using Virtual Reality JF - Frontiers in ICT N2 - This article presents an immersive virtual reality (VR) system for training classroom management skills, with a specific focus on learning to manage disruptive student behavior in face-to-face, one-to-many teaching scenarios. The core of the system is a real-time 3D virtual simulation of a classroom populated by twenty-four semi-autonomous virtual students. The system has been designed as a companion tool for classroom management seminars in a syllabus for primary and secondary school teachers. This will allow lecturers to link theory with practice using the medium of VR. The system is therefore designed for two users: a trainee teacher and an instructor supervising the training session. The teacher is immersed in a real-time 3D simulation of a classroom by means of a head-mounted display and headphone. The instructor operates a graphical desktop console, which renders a view of the class and the teacher whose avatar movements are captured by a marker less tracking system. This console includes a 2D graphics menu with convenient behavior and feedback control mechanisms to provide human-guided training sessions. The system is built using low-cost consumer hardware and software. Its architecture and technical design are described in detail. A first evaluation confirms its conformance to critical usability requirements (i.e., safety and comfort, believability, simplicity, acceptability, extensibility, affordability, and mobility). Our initial results are promising and constitute the necessary first step toward a possible investigation of the efficiency and effectiveness of such a system in terms of learning outcomes and experience. KW - virtual reality training KW - immersive classroom management KW - immersive classroom KW - virtual agent interaction KW - student simulation Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-147945 VL - 3 IS - 26 ER -